Climate change and population health in Africa: where are the scientists?

Abstract

Despite a growing awareness of Africans' vulnerability to climate change, there is relatively little empirical evidence published about the effects of climate on population health in Africa. This review brings together some of the generalised predictions about the potential continent-wide effects of climate change with examples of the relatively few locally documented population studies in which climate change and health interact. Although ecologically determined diseases such as malaria are obvious candidates for susceptibility to climate change, wider health effects also need to be considered, particularly among populations where adequacy of food and water supplies may already be marginal.

Keywords: Africa; climate change; population health; research; vulnerability.

Fig. 1.

Results of a PubMed search for ‘health’, ‘Africa’ and ‘climate change’ (26 June 2009) showing the intersections between the three terms (total citations 1,891,632).